Friday Stream of Consciousness – 75

This week at New Vintage Church we start a new series on prayer. I love preaching on prayer for three reasons: 1) Prayer’s power and essentiality for life with God, 2) It forces me to examine my prayer life in great detail, 3) It always strikes me how Western and achievement-oriented our vision of prayer is.

I’ve blogged rather modestly this week…and over the last few. The reason: I haven’t had a lot to say. I vowed to myself when I started the blog five years ago I wouldn’t just fill the blogosphere with stuff just to do so–so I post when there’s something to say, or I re-post something that might be found helpful in revised form. We live in a dust-storm of useless “5 Ways to…” lists and relatively shallow stuff. There is certainly some good stuff out there–I just don’t want to add to the dust storm of weak verbiage.

Have you ever wondered what the worst blog post of all time is?

How about the best blog post of all-time–any blog, any where?

How would we judge it?

The best ride at Knott’s Berry Farm is the Silver Bullet.

The best ride at Magic Mountain is still Viper.

The best “ride” at Disneyland is Space Mountain.

Churches can fix a lot of things more easily than the sin of pride in leadership.

French-Bread pizza is still worth the annihilation of the roof of one’s mouth as one partakes.

Despite the drop, technically, in the unemployment rate this morning, real unemployment remains in the 14-15% category and 90 million people are now out of the work force in America. Furthermore, a new record are on disability every month. I read an article entitled, “Disability is the new unemployment,” which talked about how people are finding ways to enter the disability system as an extension of unemployment when those benefits run out. Long-term, the effects of this season on the psyche of people is going to be huge—which concerns far more than the economic impact.

There is great dignity in work, and while I believe the vast majority of people would love to work if given the opportunity, the statistics would suggest that’s increasingly not the case. Until we come up with a system in which it’s more worth it to work than to not—we’re going to see the decay of the American work force, and in turn, the self-respect and diligence work cultivates.

On that up-beat note…

Baseball season is here. So, life is looking up.

Then again, when one player (the injured and ‘roided Alex Rodriguez) makes more than the entire payroll of the Houston Astros, it’s easy to get cynical again.

Preachers need to spend more time with Youth Ministers.

Youth Ministers need to hang out more with Administrators.

Administrators need to get out more and hang out with…anyone. Just kidding.

I wonder about people who never, at any point in their life, go through the experience of needing something and not being able to afford it. It adds such perspective.

Is there anything more than a truly great athlete always giving credit to others for what they’ve done. LeBron James was fantastic this week.

I’m really looking forward the “The Great Gatsby” hitting theaters in May. What a cast, and what a story.

I’m through season 2 of Duck Dynasty now, and my love for the show grows with each episode. I love that I can watch it with my kids and we can laugh together. It’s hard not to love Si the most. But, I love Phil and Jase, too. I’m still thrilled that I saw Willie wearing a shirt I have in my closet on one of the episodes.

I bought a coffee mug that says, “Happy, happy, happy,” on it. It’s a good mug to drink your morning coffee out of.

What’s on your mind this Friday morning?

Related

Dr. Tim Spivey is Lead Planter of New Vintage Church in San Diego, California. He is the author of numerous articles and one book, "Jesus: The Powerful Servant." A sought after speaker for events, Tim also serves as Adjunct Professor of Religion at Pepperdine University. Tim serves as a church consultant, and his writings are featured on ChurchLeaders.com, Church Executive magazine, Faith Village, Sermon Central, and Giving Rocket.